Friday Afternoon

and we are taking inventory of my scars, “was this you?” “where?” “here, on my elbow” “I don’t think so…”
“what about this one?” “on your thigh?” “yes”, you giggle, “probably”

you point at your own elbow, “don’t worry this wasn’t you.” I smile and sit on your lap, feeling sorry for the chair, it’s almost a hundred years old and i think it is worthy of some kind of reverence and should be spared from this. it’s 2pm, and you showed up unannounced, I like it. an hour later and you are holding me over your sweaty, bare body, “we are friends, aren’t we?” i agree, it makes me sad, you see it before i do and even though we are both late for our respective meetings you won’t leave my bed until i agree to think about how i feel and report back to you later.

I told you that i could only ever see you as a friend, this was true at the time, and mutual. we laughed about it. Called each other “best-friend”, and had the strangest conversations while making love, danced naked at 3am and laughed about our exes and all the strange things that i believe in. On Friday night we go to the grave-yard at midnight, you stroll in casually while i dig my nails into your arm, finally, i turn around screaming and run out, you aren’t impressed. “i just don’t feel like talking.” I don’t believe you but I don’t think it is my place to ask so we walk back to my room so I can study, as soon as we reach the door you say, “no, lets go lie on the field”.

i am straddling you by the path while you tell me all your reasons for wanting to stay alive, they include Game of Thrones, Naruto, Mad Men, Basketball… We estimate that gives you 5 more years, I laugh and tell you what i came up with “we are cool, this is cool.” you don’t seem so impressed with my answer but follow it up with, “yeah, that’s how i feel too.” 2 hours later and we are still lying on the field, we are talking Greek mythology, Midas, and Achilles, Athena and Aphrodite, my body is balanced perfectly on top of yours and you start singing our song, Swallowed in the sea. Coldplay. You pause to kiss me and grow frustrated when you realise my eyes are open the whole time. you don’t look me in the eye the whole time we are talking, you are staring at the sky, at my arm, you turn the other way, you bury your face in my scarf…

Tonight our conversation has a different kind of depth. I like it. and at my doorway when you take me back home, we can’t stop kissing each other. Something you said to me earlier that night “you are so cute and irrational, you can hate someone so much and then love them to death the next day.” I try to justify it and you say (and this surprises me) “I am sure you hate me sometimes, i wish you would express it though, that would be interesting.” i feel stupid because I had tried so hard to seem sane the past few days, I was “cool” and nonchalant but you can see my crazy peeking through when i talk about the spirit world and Alex. Last night I tell you I can’t do it anymore, here’s why; when i walk into the club that night your ex-girlfriend and i bump into each other, we say quiet hellos and I feel guilty. I miss you. I think you miss me too, i see you reading our messages at 3am online on Friday night when i leave. You tell me to take my time and all the space I need and are the perfect gentleman through out. I don’t feel crazy around you.

I don’t know if i did the right thing, I can’t say. But I did do the brave thing, I did the thing that will hurt less in the long run. Only time will tell.

Obliterated

For when you have the story in mind, your entire life planned out, this is who you will be, this is who will be a a part of it. Then another ordinary Friday night rolls around, and there is a knock at the door. This is a wake up call, he tells you you haven’t been living. What are you afraid of? You know he is right, so you tell him the things, about how living out loud takes more than staying in. That you are scared. And jealous. He understands, and the story goes on.

You are spinning with him, in a swamp at sunset, first rays of spring pour in. You are being held, a puppy runs up to you, your feet are soaking wet, and you are okay. Still the same person you have always been, just a different city, calling different things from you.

And summer will be rolling around soon enough too, as the seasons tend to do. And this time, you will be adorned in flowers in a small town near Amsterdam, drenched in art, proud of the path you have beaten for yourself. Obliterated. Destructed, constructing a sweeter reality.

praise for the complicated :)

Revelations Post-Valentine’s Day

1. I fucked someone I shouldn’t have and it changed everything.
2. I was doing it wrong all along.
3. The story is the same every time; I should have waited.
4. You are not the man I thought you were. Isn’t that something? March is coming, I was bracing myself for the wave of missing you but tonight I realised whoever you had become would never be worthy of the woman I am now.
5. Katherine is right.
6. Saturday night felt like breathing for the first time in forever.
7. Matt told me that loving his girlfriend felt so ordinary. The world wasn’t shifting under his feet. It sounded so right.
8. Alex cried in front me on Sunday. I have never felt so important. What was I waiting for? Rainbows? public declarations of friendship? Matt told me if I stopped chasing the things I wanted they would fall into my lap. How could he have been so right?
9. I spent Valentine’s day wrapped up in someone’s arms. Boitumelo. I was singing your name all day. Humming it as I fell asleep, singing it to my roommate as she brushed her teeth. I could taste it in my coffee and in the sunrise.

10. The poem goes “There is wonder here
And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.”

THAT changes everything.

Loss and Grace

Amsterdam (This weekend things)

I am dancing to mavado in a really leftist club downtown with this long haired boy with a waist that leaves me stunned, behind me (grabbing my hips) is K. the attractive androgynous “them” whose attention I had been trying to get all night. The light hits me and it feels like everyone is watching, I want to yell “Can you see this?! This is the life I have been dreaming about!”

In that moment I am so sad, it hit me hard how beautiful and rare this was and how it would be a struggle to ever find a place and a feeling like this. I don’t know if there is life after Amsterdam. I made more friends that night that I had done this year so far, I felt so at ease, speaking my truths and listening to others as they spoke theirs. They played Rita Indiana y los misterios and EVERYONE danced, I wasn’t the only one screaming that it was my song. Beautiful, strong women were everywhere, I found a friend of a friend of a friend from long ago who overheard me saying I wanted a blunt and arranged for someone to give me theirs. If that’s not kindness I do not know what is.
I got a girl’s number, she is 27, living with her partner and open to everything life has to offer. I danced till my feet hurt and I knew that the world was bigger than I had ever imagined, and it was beautiful.

On Thursday night, I got so high and had such a horrible trip, I could see time, and emotions and I couldn’t remember my own name for 6 hours, it is the scariest thing I have ever been through. I remember the sky flashing from night to day each time i closed my eyes and barely remembering who on earth my friends were. It felt like the truth. I couldn’t see the things I usually focus on, all that was there was the plain facts.

The guy I was hooking up with and I got into a public fight in Burger King (classy, I know) but he insisted on labeling someone as female when they didn’t identify in that way, I tried to explain why it was important but he wanted to talk about how inconvenient it was for him.

It wasn’t about that.

I think we were fighting over the fact that we spent a little too long staring at each other before we fell asleep the night before, and how I reacted upon meeting his girlfriend and how I wouldn’t dance with him in the Latino club. I apologised and we hugged, but 5 hours later, on a street on the way back we were tearing each others’ heads off again. I told him that as soon as that bus stopped at our campus I wanted nothing to do with him ever again, he looked like his heart was broken. Those brown eyes though. They say more than his mouth does. I think that’s the end of that.

Up next, Prague for Spring break. 🙂

Do I wanna know?

Because I am drawn to permanently sunny places

Tonight, you walk up to me and run your fingers through my braids, you say, in perfect English, that the lines are like streets and sidewalks, and the braids are the sky scrapers. “Okay,” I think, “you have my attention”. I turn to JK, “is he drunk?” she shakes her head in that dismissive way, “nah, he is always like that…”.

We spend the whole night in that corner booth talking. About Iran, about Zimbabwe, getting high, the sun, your mother, (she comes up a lot tonight, why do I feel so honoured?) I keep catching you staring at me. I stare back, I am drunk. I am brave. This is going to sound so silly but you are the first person to make me laugh this much, this freely, since winter started, I want to lean into whatever is warming up your soul. And you are so fearless. Your English is shit, but you are talking anyway, you stop and turn to ask my roommate when the words are hard to come by and we carry on because there things to be said tonight.

Then, midway through a German conversation with JK you say, in English, for me to hear, “My apartment is 2 minutes away, you guys should come.” At this point I am thinking “I would go ANYWHERE with you.” We go. We dance to Die Antwoord, just us two fellow freaks, and gush over how sexy Yolandi Visser is (I have never met anyone else who agrees with me on this one!) I am already planning my weekend trip to your place and sleepovers before you offer up your bed for the night. We can’t stay but we make plans for the next week. I am happy.

You are the sunniest place I have been in 6 months.

you have never seen a sky this gray

Lately i spent my day watching an online countdown to spring, just watching the seconds ticking past slowly while i dream of sunshine and sandals and short skirts. Everything will be better in spring I think. I will actually go out and sit with people. I will take my speakers with me and listen to summery music about friendship and falling in love while everything falls into place. There is this guy in my major who looks really good in shorts, with that geometric tattoo on his thigh, when winter came he put them away in favour of long unflattering pants. Spring will bring them back and class will be a little more bearable with something that good to stare at.

This city is also just so much prettier with the sun, you notice the gold on the buildings and the green from the old copper looks perfect against a blue sky. But now it’s all dreary and I miss the town I grew up in where the sun actually comes out. My old boss said I was sleeping so much because I was lacking vitamin D, he knew it wasn’t my fault that I was just exhausted all the time, apparently this is as common as it is fixable. Some sites say short bursts of bright light will do me good. But honestly, when did I stoop so low as to have a fake a sun when it shines so readily where i come from. I am too proud to get help yet.

Next week we are heading to Amsterdam, it’s never been on my travel list, i don’t know why. Probably because i am drawn to permanently sunny places. We are going to be sharing an apartment, 5 friends, for 3 days. I am pretty excited but bummed out about the preparation that’s going to have to go in to it. ordering tickets and stuff. I am hooking up with one of the guys coming along. No one knows. He isn’t my type. Or proudest moment. despite the number of girls swooning over him. and I think he feels the same about me. So even though he comes up a lot in my conversations with other friends I have kept my mouth shut. Also, one of my closest friends is in love with him. He has never liked her, so I don’t feel too bad. But I know that if I ever confess it would be out of spite and out of a desire to prove a point to her, and I do not want to be that kind of person. So I am insisting on keeping my mouth zipped.

I wonder what I will think of myself ad the decisions 5 years down the line when I read this blog.

Also, how beautiful is this man?

Ezra Miller (unknown source)

That nigga don’t really love you girl, he just beds you every night it’s his past time…